Not just thatthis was my
that te wasGebre wasmy
someone I had known.
Instead, the doctors said, they couldn’t guarantee what would happen when an organic mind interfaced with the Tryphon. Like a navigational arcspace interface, the Tryphon was designed to connect an organic mind with a computer system. Unlike a navigational interface, the arccomms interface was designed to punch a hole through reality no bigger than the core of an atom, requiring none of the usual acceleration or power expenditure to do so. Through this micro-tear between the real and the dark, narrow-bands comms could be broadcast between two linked minds, bound together by the Tryphon itself.
Thus, communications could be established, blackship to command, command to blackship, all without the expense and complexity of a tanglecomm pair. And unlike a tanglecomm connection, any mind connected to any Tryphon should, in theory, be able to reach out across the dark and touch any other.
Naturally, the entangled mind would go mad, sooner rather than later.
The tear between worlds may have only been atomic in its scale, but the dark was the dark. It would be slower, softer than the great tearing-apart of arcspace navigation. Could take weeks, maybe even months before the Tryphon killed its recipients, but they would die.
Naturally, they would die, as all things did that touched the black.
Not me.
There were forty Pilots on board theMirabei. Their lives were valuable to the Xi.
Rencki watched the first time I interfaced. In the aftermath of Adjumir, qe had reprioritised certain processes, and though I couldn’t tell exactly what had been lost, I could sense that the protocols running at highest priority in qis system were those of anxiety, worry, maybe even – maybe at long last – fear.
“Maw?” qe asked. “Are you regulated? Are you safe?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
Here are the voices of the minds chained to their blackship chairs.
…there is music playing red on red on red I think I smell it yes there there the spring by the sea seaweed rotting on the shore it is the sound of crimson pull the bow across the string…
… again and again and again needle in the eye whose eye is it needle in yourself if you imagine it you will feel it and when you close your eye it will still be there still be there just like me…
… there is no place where there is silence…
781, 239 calling, I am calling did you hear me I am calling!
The fish scuttled across the floor, its chitinous feet silent unless you leaned down close, then you could hear it, then it sounded like the sea. When it died its belly turned yellow then black, others came to eat it they always come
… are you there? Are you there? Are you there? Can you hear me? Oh god oh god oh god it’s coming again it’s coming I can hear it coming please don’t leave me don’t leave me please don’t!
It is not a darkness. It is endless light, inverted. Your mind is the mirror. I am coming home.
I tried to count them, tried to pick out individual voices. Some were stronger than others – new minds, bright minds, raw in their terror. The darkness hadn’t found them yet. I tried to hold them tight in my embrace, whisper,There is nothing here to fear. We are curious. That is all. Merely curious.
Sometimes they seemed to hear me, grow a little quieter in their ramblings, whisper when I asked my questions.
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
Sometimes they screamed – not the cries of terror, not the dirges of pain that sometimes split the madness, but messages blasted across the dark between blackship and command.
POSITION MAINTAINED! SYSTEMS NORMAL! MAINTAINING! MAINTAINING!
I could taste the machine behind these sounds, the mechanical input overriding the crying-out of the mind through which itpassed. It tasted like fluffy green, a sickly, rotting fungal flavour on the edge of perception, a thing that did not belong, that was not welcome.
Tell me where you are, I whispered.I am listening. I am here.
A few minds fled from me, or tried to run. There was no escape; they would live and die with their thoughts flayed open to the dark. I did my best to soothe them, and it was meaningless. One blurted out a coordinate, and when the soldiers pulled me out of my reverie, only twenty seconds had passed, and I was bleeding from my nose, my ears, my eyes, and had been in the dark for days.
And just once, just for a moment, I saw hím.
